


Distance

by zuzuzukas_dream



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Danganronpa, dangan ronpa 3
Genre: Angst, Crying, Dreams, F/M, Nightmares, dr3 spoilers, weird abstract stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 13:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10618356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzuzukas_dream/pseuds/zuzuzukas_dream
Summary: Makoto's dreams are haunted. This is set during DR3, post-episode 9, and will include plot spoilers. It's a semi-old drabble I wrote in reaction to Kirigiri's plotline.





	

**Author's Note:**

> buh yeah this is distant angst and stuff. set before ep 12 but after ep 9. god my heart hurts. did u see the way his legs shook. the way he tried to keep himself together. IM shook

"You are the culprit, Naegi."

It was never going to be nice to be back. Makoto doesn't register their surroundings with much thought, but the mere mention of a culprit breathes a new life into the home of his deepest trauma. The walls on this floor are purple. The library.

Kyouko. "Why did you do it?"

His body isn't quite pieced together. Without a single frame that will capture them all, his mind's eye takes one limb at a time. He's moving his hands.

The knowledge of his crime returns to him from seemingly nowhere at all. "I'll tell you at the trial," he's saying. Of course - the trial. It should almost be time. "It's important that everybody knows."

Clicks from her boots resonate within the hallway. The pillars peel from his vision, already blurred as he finds his focus on her face. "But, it's just us. There's nobody else to say it to."

Confusion. "What about Togami? And Aoi. Touko isn't here, and I'm still worried for Yasuhiro, but--"

A lock of hair is twisted in Kyouko's fingers, and her attention lacks a ferocity that it might have if she weren't a mere imprint of a real existence. "The trial's about to start. Tell me. What's most important right now is that I have a statement to further my investigation."

"But, I didn't do it," he says, changing his mind now. His eyes feel worn, and a lump is forming in his throat. There's something about the way this woman stares at him that makes it difficult to remain steady. Perhaps the memory that her current stance has been derived from has deeper connotations - but it's not as though he could be aware of that now.

She sits down. "I know." It appears that such a thing is simply what they've all decided to do, because Makoto follows her example and crosses his legs over. Here, he sees her in the tiles. Here, she is close, and he feels as though she's scared.

The trial room. They're in the trial room. The floors are checkered black and white.

"So, Naegi didn't do it?" Monokuma jostles him from his focus and is pasted into view. Up there, on that high throne of a stand, his paw firmly grasping upon the button. The button, the... execution button. "If that wimp didn't do it, then who did?"

But, it's only the two of them. Who could...

Kyouko does not stand. Does not dust off her skirt or wave goodbye. She simply... becomes further away. Like Makoto is moving, and the walls are moving, and everything is moving but her on the floor, ready to fall asleep. Ready to wait for the timer to be out.

Kyouko? No, she's... This isn't right.

He focuses on her leather hands and stays sat where he is. Focus leaving his body, he sees the pair of them, and the distance between them, and the distance that becomes between them. He watches her turn her face.

"Throw whatever you have at me," she tells the mechanical beast. "I don't care. I don't care."

It occurs to him that he feels disconnected from her. All at once, simply, but with a crushing weight afterwards - it presses into him, the panic, and abruptly he's reaching out. Crying.

"Don't go," he says. Blubs. "Kyouko, I need you."

"You think I'll die?"

"I know you'll die."

He sees her lips, and sees her bite them.

Those eyes of hers have turned to glass. Smooth and glistening. Catching the light. Like a distorted reflection in a pool of ripples, he remembers this look in her eyes. Though, he fails to understand where it comes from.

"You know I'll die," she says. Repeats his words like he doesn't know them. "Where is that hopefulness you hold so dear?"

\--

Makoto wakes up searching. Blindly grasping, panting, whining, as though the cotton wheel of the dream has rolled beneath the cupboards. As though he could piece it back together and step back into it if he tried.

He saw her. Kyouko.

Flickering photographs of the past few minutes, seconds, reach into his vision. She is alive, and he feels conscious enough to hear her breathe when he lets his eyes drop the curtain. Lets them envelop him in scripts and wooden swords that save princesses from ladders and cardboard towers.

Lets them etch into his eyelids the feeling of scarred fingers against his bare hand. Lets them tally his nerve endings with every second spent in her embrace. Lets them scratch away at his memory as he focuses on the mere knowledge that she was there - right in front of him, on the monochrome floor of Hope's Peak Academy, her reflection fading as it bled from her feet.

There is no focus to be held or kept as his vision floods.

He saw her, just now. She looked so alive.

His heartbeat is a storm, and the floodgates open within his eyes.

But, Kyouko is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> i believed she was alive the whole time, but like naegi, i was horrified and fearful that it might actually be true, in a distant way. i made a full theory post about why shes alive lol. i cried during episode 11 because it kinda hit me that kirigiri MIGHt have been dead and then when episode 12 happened i became the happiest girl alive


End file.
